sambum

"Foreigners in Thailand want as much as they can get for as little as possible,..." Total bullpoo - Foreigners,especially tourists, want to pay a fair price for any services or amenities, but they don't expect to be charged 4 or 5 times the amount that Thais pay - especially for "Tourist Attractions"! "They have no say..." Correct, but they can have an opinion! "...and the Government has no interest". So why the constant emphasis on Tourism by the Government if they have "no interest"? Visa free entries which appears to be letting anybody and his dog into the country including Chinese Mafia types, and Russian draft dodgers, all in the interests of making BAHT for the country/Government.

Thought so!

Maybe you should have used the correct acronym ("PSYOP") in the first place , and explained what it stood for!

Then America would belong to the North American Indians, instead of immigrants who almost destroyed their way of life along with almost making one of their main food sources extinct. And a similar scenario in Australia, except they imported boat loads of criminals to colonise the place. P.S. Sorry, SIRINEOU, I posted this before I saw yours! But nice to know that somebody agrees with me!

Sir David Attenborough made a very telling comment right at the end of his "Life on Earth" programme. Filmed at Cape Canaveral/Kennedy Space Center beside a huge NASA rocket, he said, "America has proposed to spend billions of dollars on investigating the possibility of establishing a colony on another planet. Would that money not be better spent on looking after (improving?) the one that we've got?" A wonderfully incisive statement from a great man!

"Phyops"? I'm from the UK and never heard of it - mind there are more acronyms flying around these days than 737's! Googled it and it came up with nothing for "Phyops" - but it had this:- https://www.google.com/search?Psychological operations (PSYOP) are operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their motives and objective reasoning%2C

My understanding/definition of "BOT" is obviously different to yours!

You should get yourself a job at TAT - you'd do rather well!

So, your point being?

Before Covid, the Government were quoting tourism % of GDP in single figures. Now, according to Google:- "Meanwhile, the total tourism receipts increased 71.7% from the same quarter of 2022. Thailand's tourism industry, which accounts for around 18% of GDP, began recovering in the second half of 2022, when Bangkok lifted all entry restrictions, and the recovery picked up strongly in the last quarter.Aug 21, 2566 BE" But, depending on whose statistics you look at, figures range from about 11% to 20%, and if you take the services sector as a whole, according to Statista, as quoted in a previous post:- "... the share of agriculture in Thailand's gross domestic product was 8.81 percent, industry contributed approximately 35 percent and the services sector contributed about 56.19 percent."

Sarcasm does travel!

From Statista in 2022:- "This statistic shows the share of economic sectors in the gross domestic product (GDP) in Thailand from 2012 to 2022. In 2022, the share of agriculture in Thailand's gross domestic product was 8.81 percent, industry contributed approximately 35 percent and the services sector contributed about 56.19 percent."

"The Tourism Authority of Thailand anticipates a further recovery to between 35 million and 40 million visitors this year, including 8.2 million from China." Just when I thought they'd gone to sleep, or on holiday, along they come with another of their "anticipations" - Yawn!

The "Samui thing" is different in that sometimes people want to get from A to B as quickly as they can - especially tourists who want to get to their destination and "on the beach" as quickly as possible! Personally, I begrudge paying their prices, and don't mind taking a bit more time to get from A to B, and take the Samui to Donsak ferry, then fly from Surat Thani at less than half the price, but it does take a few hours longer.

From the headline:- "British motorist causes severe accident in Pattaya." From the article:- "At 3:16 AM, on April 4th, 2024, Pattaya City police received an accident report of a foreigner who was allegedly intoxicated on a motorbike" Does nobody check these articles before they go to print?

Totally agree with what you say - they ask for all these pointless bits of paper "because they can" - a bit like Bangkok Air charging such extortionate prices for flights to Samui!

A house visit is now an annual occurrence in Samui in order to obtain a visa extension by way of marriage to a Thai national. What sticks in my craw is having to repeat the same "performances" year after year, even when nothing has changed. For instance, why should I need to produce photocopies of EVERY page from my passport EVERY year? Why do I need to give Immigration a copy of my Marriage Certificate EVERY year? (It's not possible that the date that we got married is going to change!)

I "think" that maybe the type of Thais that are educated enough to read this forum realise that NOBODY wants the type of farang that the post is about, and I "think" it is quite wrong to assume that all Thais think the same way as you intimate in your final sentence.

Yes, wouldn't want to be seen as offending them!

"All of which is above Anutins head as he just likes to go on occasional parochial rants to distract from his own myriad failings 🙂" Anutin is well known for his views on foreigners, ever since one refused his offer of a mask during Covid - and walked away without bowing! 🙂 I believe he said "dirty unwashed foreigners" were the reason that Covid was in Thailand? I think his latest tirade against foreigners is not totally unjustified, but IMHO he is "seething inwardly" because of the PM's recent public lambasting of the use of cannabis, inasmuch as he said "it was going to be the downfall of the country" (or words to that effect), so Anutin is venting his anger on "foreigners behaving badly". Poor old Anutin, after he has spent so much time promoting its use, and got so much money tied up in the widespread production and marketing of "weed" only for his "boss" to publicly denounce its use! Shame, really! 🤣🤣🤣 Can you just imagine his actions if he was PM? Scary! Anyway, is it just coincidence that this outbreak of bad behaviour just seems to be happening since the "visa free" scheme was put in place? (Som nam na!) And for a change, "drunken Brits" do not seem to be being reported as the main antagonists! Shame, really! 🤣🤣🤣

Sorry, I thought it was the cop originally in charge of the investigation. P.S. Have we not been on the same threads before - a long time ago?

Sorry, I didn't realise that Prayut was actually at the scene!

The reports on "taxi bad behaviour " seems to have gone full circle as the apparent campaign against farangs seems to be gaining pace. The reports used to be centred on taxi drivers trying to overcharge, dropping people off in the middle of "nowhere" due to a disputed increase in fare, refusing to put the meter on etc etc etc. It is fairly common knowledge that Anutin has got it in for "dirty unwashed foreigners", and now there seems to be a concerted effort to find any misdemeanour by foreigners, and publish it in the media. (I can not recall any recent reports of "bad behaviour" by Thais, but I am sure that it happens.) All a bit bizarre when the Government and TAT are desperate to attract more tourists to LOS!

You mean like the member of the public Red Bull heir, "Boss"? Sorry, no, he was never arrested in the first place, so he couldn't skip bail! Just "got out while the going was good"!

Thank you for your advice, and things are a bit clearer now! Pity the headlines and the subject matter of the post sometimes leave you a bit in "limbo" i.e. the headline to this post says quite clearly:- investigators sought an arrest warrant for Surachate “Big Joke” Hakparn, Deputy National Police Chief of Thailand, following three previously issued summonses. The post by "Archadian" is very helpful, and fortunately seems more aware of the current situation than some of the media! Interesting times ahead!